Our Intelligent Control System

Food - we love it. But it is making us fat and sick and growing it is destroying the soils and planet on which we all depend.

What has gone wrong and what do we do about it?

Some experts say it is because we eat too much so we should eat less and exercise more. Other experts say it is our modern food with too much fat and sugar.

The truth is so simple that no one believes it.

Our bodies have evolved to have an intelligent control system which says stop eating when you are full.

We call it the gut-brain.

Our modern food system, profit before people, is simply not feeding the microbes in our gut so they send out hormones so we crave food, overeat and get fat and sick.

Solution - just feed your gut-brain.

Breed beneficial microbes in the soil under controlled conditions so the beneficial microbes out-breed the harmful microbes, grow plants in this living soil and eat the plants.

A green smoothie in the morning works wonders - the food cravings will stop and you will be fit and healthy.

The solution is so simple and inexpensive that no one believes it.

I can show you how but it needs a social movement with people feeding their gut brain and showing their friends and contacts that this works for real.

From bad news to good news

No one likes bad news. It is bad news that three out of four people will die prematurely from a chronic disease but you can still believe that you will be the lucky one in four.

But not for us, my wife, a medical doctor became diabetic, her foot started to turn black and the doctors were talking about amputation.

I am not a medical doctor, I am an engineer, I like to know how things work so I have spent many years trying to work out what is the basic cause of diabetes, and the other chronic diseases, and the first level answer is the wrong fat in the wrong place.

But that is not an answer, the second level I needed to answer was what causes us to store the wrong fat in the wrong place. The conventional answer is that we are little piggies and eat too much - the calorie balance theory.

The conventional solution is ‘eat less and exercise’ more. There may be some truth in that, we can’t ignore the basic laws of conservation of mass and energy.

But people have been trying that for decades and it does not work, chronic diseases keep on getting worse. So we need to go to level three and ask why we eat too much.

The answer to that appears simple, there are deficiencies in our modern diet, we all have an intelligent control system which regulates our bodies. It senses these deficiencies and sends out hormones so we feel hungry and eat more than we need.

This is where you have a choice.

Look at the blood sugar graph - we need to keep the line within the band, this is what engineers do all the time with their control systems, the techniques we use apply to both our machines and our bodies.

I have explained that in a number of articles as listed below. You can spend an afternoon reading these articles and then a week using the long-forgotten art of thinking to understand the control system inside your body.

Then you will have a good chance of avoiding chronic diseases. Prevention is better than cure.

These are all free in the public domain, published under the Creative Common system, you just read and think, but you will need to sign in with a genuine email. I got fed up with dubious companies using my web to sell even more dubious magic pills.

That is the cost of avoiding having your foot chopped off from diabetes or the other nasties of chronic diseases.

The solution is simple feed your gut brain.

The web is full of magic solutions with very clever marketing strategies, all you have to do is wave your credit card, money will disappear from your account but you will still be prone to chronic disease.

I was recognised by the Institute of Engineers as one of Australia’s leading innovators.

I understand how control system works and have spent decades trying to understand how the human body’s intelligent control system works.

The global mega-companies that dominate the food and drug industries benefit greatly from the current system - profits before community benefit.

I think that focusing on profits when eight million people a year have a limb amputated is just plain wrong, it is certainly not the sort of society I want to live in.

But these industries are trillion-dollar industries, they have almost unlimited budgets that spend billions of dollars per year on dubious promotion and Government lobbying to protect their financial interest.

I am just one person, an 84-year-old engineer, not a marketing guru or social activist, still fit and healthy but still just one person.

I try to help people stay fit and healthy through my research and making the results available by running this web and publishing articles, but one person can only achieve so much.

Everybody has to eat and the bulk of the world’s population of eight billion people are suffering from an intelligent control system that is not working as nature intended.

If I can create a social movement then many people across the globe can benefit from a fully functioning intelligent control system.

So why not join the movement? Start by reading the articles highlighted below and if you decide you want to make the world a better place for us humans to live then join the Gbiota movement.

There are over 300 posts and 150 videos on this site.  It may be an indepth study of food and health but it can be a bit overwhelming.

I have made ashort list of the key posts below in a suggested reading schedule.  I suggest you start having a look a these posts, at the end of each post just click on Home in the menu or main menu in the footer at the bottom of each post which will bring you back to this page and then you can look at the next post.

You can see all post at blogs

If you have question of want to chat I am available for email or video chats.

 

 

 

Not little piggies

We don’t get fat and sick because we have turned into little piggies.

We get fat and sick because our modern food system does not feed our gut-brain which regulates our appetite and immune system.

The solution is to feed your gut-brain.

We cannot do this for you - there is no magic pill, but we can show you how.

It is not trivial, takes a bit of effort and must be done right but other people are doing it.

It is your body, your life and your choice.

 

 

Diabetes and insulin resistance

Insulin resistance is an evolved characteristic that ensures the brain has a continuous supply of sugars.

When sugars are in short supply insulin resistance restricts the flow of sugars to the muscles so sugars are available for the brain.

Insulin resistance is an evolved characteristic for our survival. If the brain dies we die. It is the way our intelligent control system keeps us alive.

When our intelligent control system is fully functional the system works fine. When our intelligent control system is not  functional we get diabetes.

Our intelligent control system operates in our subconscious brain, we have no control or even know what it is doing but it regulates our bodies.

Temperature is a classic example of our intelligent control system at work, it makes us shiver when cold or sweat when hot, we have no control over it but it regulates our temperature to a fraction of a degree.

Our gut biome is a critical part of this intelligent control system, playing a major part in our appetite, how much and what sort of food we want to eat and also our immune system protecting us 24/7.

From the moment we are born, it is learning and adapting to the current conditions, as described in more detail later.

It works to keep us alive protecting us from both infectious and non-infectious diseases and can only be described as a marvel of the human body.

But, at times it fails and then we have serious problems.

Unfortunately, the importance of our intelligent control system is not widely recognised so we fail to feed and train it with disastrous consequences.

The modern diabetes epidemic is caused by failure to feed our gut brain so our intelligent control system no longer functions properly.

Eating a diet rich in vegetables may improve our gut-brain and intelligent control system but only if the vegetables are grown in soil containing the beneficial microbes.

This is well understood in enlightened scientific circles but unfortunately, the popular press is fixated with the calorie balance theory which is overly simplistic so we rely on magic pills or diets, which are highly profitable when the real problem is we are not caring for our intelligent control system.

Sadly we have switched from being Homo-sapiens to Homo-profitus.

Profit or Health

Our intelligent control system

I experiment. I breed microbes in the soil, grow plants in that soil and then eat them. I eat different foods and measure my blood sugar levels to see what happens.

We do not appreciate how sophisticated our bodies are.

We have an intelligent control system in our gut which regulates our appetite - what and how much we want to eat.

It works like the intelligent control software I used to write. It senses our blood sugar has an error, it looks at how rapidly it is changing and applies a correction, it looks at how well that correction worked, learns from that and creates a new correction.

I feed my gut-brain so I have an effective intelligent control system.

Piggy me

I look at my blood sugar reading and it is fine.

But then I am naughty and go to a restaurant and pig out.

I see that I get a blood sugar spike from eating naughty food but the microbes in my gut are here to look after me and protect me from my naughty habits.

They communicate with each other, just like in a computer to provide real intelligence.

They work out that something is wrong and make hormones to bring my blood sugar level down and within a couple of hours my blood sugar is back to normal.

Feed our gut-brains

All I have to do is feed my gut-brain and make sure it has the right microbes. There is nothing new about this, we evolved this way and we have been feeding our gut-brain for hundreds of thousands of years.

And then we stopped. Why?

Because our modern food system puts their profits ahead of our health.

But you and I can fix that.

Microbes breed like crazy, they make teenagers at a drunken party look like a pack of nuns.

There is no problem in breeding microbes all we have to do is to manage the conditions so the good bugs out-breed the bad bugs a process we call Eco-balance which again has been going on for millions of years.

That is what Gbiota is all about, it is a social movement that puts health before profits and shows people who want to live a long and healthy life how to feed their gut brain.

Read on - then sign up and join the movement.

The good gut bugs are here to protect us

Beneficial microbes, the good bugs, in our gut control our appetite and immune system leading to a long and healthy life.

Our modern food system is deficient in these, good bugs, so we have an epidemic of chronic non-infectious diseases - overweight, diabetes, heart attacks and dementia.

Three out of four people will now die, prematurely from chronic diseases.

Our health system is creaking at the joints, not enough doctors and health care professionals, ambulances ramping outside overfull wards, billions of dollars spent on avoidable care and amputations.

All because we don’t have the protection of the good gut bugs.

We know how to fix it - we just have to do it.

Our intelligent control system

People often think our bodies are dumb and we get fat and sick because we eat too much.

Our bodies are very smart and we can see this by looking at the blood sugar level throughout the day.

Imagine that you are controlling your blood sugar level and have to keep the level within limits, you have two buttons one to increase blood sugar levels and the other to reduce it.

How, as an intelligent creature, would you manage those two buttons?

At night there is not much to do so just a little push on the down button is all you need.

But then in the morning, you know there will be a need for energy so you press the up button at wake-up time and the blood sugar levels rise.

We can see that our intelligent control system does exactly this our blood sugar rises between wake-up and breakfast.

Both you and our intelligent control system know that at breakfast time there is going to be a big surge in blood sugar levels as your body gets stuck into all that toast and marmalade so you are both on standby.

As soon as you see the blood sugar levels rising both you and your body’s intelligent control system start pushing the down button to bring the blood sugar level back under control.

Message - your body is smart not some dumb machine that works on a crude calories in calories out basis.

Of course, the basic laws of conservation of mass and energy apply so we have to eat to get fat and sick but the reason why we overeat is because we have are not looking after our intelligent control system not because we are little piggies.

Blood sugar and fat are pretty much interchangeable.

Before I even wake up in the morning my intelligent control system anticipates that I will need extra energy so it draws down on my fat stores so I have energy available.

When I get around to eating breakfast there is a surplus of energy so my intelligent control system stores some of this sugar as fat.

I used to write intelligent control software which had self-learning and anticipatory functions. Our intelligent control system seems to have these capabilities built in.

This is a natural human capacity. If we wake up and see a blue sky we may go and water the garden. We have learned that blue sky means a probability of being hot and dry so we anticipate a high water use by our plants.

If there are dark clouds we may put of watering for now.

This is a natural human capability so we need to assume that this is how our intelligent control system is managing our blood sugar and fat storage.

What we can say for sure is that the calorie balance theory, which looks as our body like a water tank, with flows in and out and the water level is determined by these flows is a simplistic model which is leading us to major errors.

This is serious as three out of four people die prematurely from a chronic disease which is caused by the wrong fat in the wrong place.

How have we got ourselves into such a mess?

We know how to breed the beneficial microbes, the good bugs. Just collect organic waste, mix with soil and volcanic rock dust, add inoculants, grow plants and eat them while fresh.

How do I know this, for a start I study the work of experts in the field like Professor Tim Spencer and Bill Bulsiewicz, but then I collect organic waste and grow gut-brain food.

Then I test it on myself.

I wear a continuous blood sugar monitor. If I eat modern food my readings go through the roof, I am not diabetic but would soon be if I just ate modern foods  that are deficient in beneficial microbes.

So I eat gut-brain food adding it to my regular diet and see my reading drop down to healthy levels.

This is not rocket science - anyone can do it.

We can't do it for you but we can show you how.

So why haven’t we fixed the chronic disease problem?

Most Governments have Health and Welfare departments whose job is to prevent these chronic diseases. Why aren’t they promoting that we all eat gut-brain food full of the good bugs?

It is a simple question of profits versus health and at this moment profits for big food and big pharma are winning while Governments stand back and procrastinate with busy work.

Market power

Profits! Big food and big pharma make a lot of money from the current system, they have immense marketing power to protect their profits while there is no money to be made showing people how to collect their kitchen waste to breed the good bugs and grow the plants that will feed the good bugs in our gut.

Join us

What can you do about this? Join the Gbiota movement for social change.

The first step is to register, stand up and show you care, the more people that show they care the better able we are to get people to eat gut-brain food.

You can join for free and read the many articles on food and health, later when you are convinced that all people should be eating gut-brain food you can learn how, we do ask people to contribute but it is a pittance and you will end up saving money (and maybe your foot).

We are a social benefit organisation, but it costs money to develop technology to learn how to grow gut-brain food and we have to cover our costs. If you can’t afford to contribute we have a needy membership for $1 for those that cannot afford to pay.

Join us and change the world so people can have a long and healthy life with a sustainable food system based on recycling waste.

 

 

 

 

 

Want to live a long and healthy life?

DIY breed your own gut bugs? Your immediate reaction may be no thanks I am not a microbiologist.

Well, let me tell you, right now you are breeding your own gut bugs, whether you like it or not.

Microbes, I prefer to call them bugs, are everywhere, in the air, our drinks, our food and they breed like crazy doubling every twenty minutes 1,2,4,8,16,32,64,128 …. trillions.

You can kill them all off with powerful disinfectants but they will be back.

You can’t stop them breeding, the only choice you have is what sort of bugs live inside you.

There are good bugs which make you fit and healthy, not-so-good bugs which make you fat and sick, and bugs that kill you.

You don’t need to be a microbiologist to tell what species of bugs are inside people.

Just go to any shopping centre and you will see people that are fit and healthy, they have the good bugs.

People with wobbly bums and tums, they have the not-so-good bugs.

If you want to see the people with the bad bugs you will have to go to the mortuary to find them.

You can’t stop bugs breeding but you can choose what sorts of bugs are breeding inside you.

If you have the conditions that benefit the good bugs they will out-breed and out-compete the not-so-good and bad bugs.

It has been going on for millions of years and we call it Eco-balance. We can use Eco-balance to select what sort of bugs live inside us.

That is what Gbiota is all about, we can’t breed the bugs for you but we can show you how to create the conditions that will favour the bugs you want, which we assume is the good bugs so you can look forward to a long and healthy life but you have to do it yourself - we show you how.

Our intelligent control system

Our bodies have an intelligent control system which regulates our bodies, particularly our appetite and immune system.

Our gut is an integral part of this control system. If we have the right blend of species in our gut we can expect a long and healthy life, if we have a poor blend of species we get fat and sick.

The blend of species in our gut is the result of a long chain, starting in the soil with the nutrients and moisture, the microbes in the soil, the creatures of the soil, the plants that are grown, how quickly the plants are eaten after harvesting and how they are processed.

We have to look at all these factors as an integrated system, which may be complex but we can easily tell if we have it right, we feel satisfied and stop craving more food.

This may seem complex but the final answer is simple, grow your own gut-brain food. Anyone can do it and look forward to a long and healthy life.

We need the microbes

We don’t eat rocks to get our nutrients, we need microbes and fungi to break down the rocks into nutrients we can digest.

Similarly with energy, we need photosynthesis from plants on land or algae in water to capture the sun’s energy.

Our lives are dependent on these micro-organisms.

But they do much more than provide a path to nutrients and energy, they can communicate with each other to provide intelligence which regulates our bodies. We see this with insects like bees and ants, birds that live in flocks, slime moulds and even human society.

We call this swarm intelligence and it is what regulates our bodies which controls our bodily functions particularly our appetite and immune system.

Microbes are essential for life. However, there are beneficial microbes that keep us fit and healthy and harmful microbes that make us fat and sick.

Over millions of years, nature has evolved a system with trillions of microbes and many thousands of species but with the right conditions so the beneficial microbes preferentially out-compete and out-breed the harmful microbes, we call this ecological balance and it is how we exist today.

Generally, microbes breed and die incredibly fast with cells dividing within twenty minutes of formation, we may see the same species over time, they are not the same microbes they are their great, great grand kids, we call this dynamic equilibrium.

There are trillions of microbes in our gut comprising many thousands of species. Initially, these microbes come from our mum but later they come from microbes that breed in the soil, move into the plants we eat and then into our gut biome.

Our health depends on the dynamic equilibrium of the microbes in the soil and in our gut biome.

Our modern food system, centred on chemical industrial agriculture and highly processed foods is lacking these beneficial microbes which has led to a global epidemic of chronic diseases, overweight, diabetes, heart attack and dementia.

To overcome this we need to preferentially breed the beneficial microbes in the soil by carefully controlling the conditions, growing plants and eating them while still fresh before the microbes die.

This is not difficult, virtually anyone can do it. We cannot do it for you but we can show you how to do it by having a Gbiota box of plants growing at your home which you pick and eat.

 

 

 

 

The two side of Gbiota

We teach how to grow plants as pre and pro-biotics. That is the easy bit, understanding and applying the science of breeding beneficial microbes in a special soil, Wickimix largely made from organic and rock dust, and using the principle of Eco balance to create the condition so the beneficial microbes out-breed the harmful microbes.

This is straightforward but must be done right so we provide technical support to our members.

I answered a question for Jenny, one of our members which turned out to be one of the most important articles on how to sustainably grow healthy food and combat the epidemic the modern epidemic of chronic diseases, over-weight, diabetes, heart attacks and dementia.

Normally an article like this would be restricted to members but this is such an important issue that I am making it available under the Creative Commons system which means it can be re-published without further approval, just acknowledgement of source www.gbiota,com

I have just released a major article on community health Here is the link

Here is the link to Jenny

 

 

Dangerous ideas

Have you ever thought why, when you go to the shopping centre there are so many wobbly bums and tums and people hobbling around with a foot chopped off?

The real answer is not because our modern food has too many fats and sugars, we have to go back a few hundred thousand years for the real answer.

A bunch of humanoids were sitting around their campfire when someone asked ‘What’s for breakfast?’

Some one said it would be a few hundred thousand years before someone invented Wheaties for breakfast so how about a Mastodon steak?

Feeling hungry they worked out a plan on how they could kill a Mastodon, it worked and humans became addicted to ideas, in this case cooperating was better than no breakfast.

We becames addicted to ideas from learning how to kill Mastodons and have a good breakfast - that's unless you happened to be a Mastodon.

If you want agreement never invite the loosers to the decision making process.

Since then we have had all sorts of good ideas, less good ideas and some terrible ideas which has led to us becoming a highly cooperative creature and the second most successful creature on the planet after cockroaches who will be the last remaining creature on Earth in a few billion years.

One of those less good ideas and in my opinion terrible ideas is that the sole role of companies is to make as much money for their shareholders and in the case of the food (and tobacco and fossil fuel) industries who cares about the collateral damage of people getting fat and sick and having their legs chopped off from diabetes.

My idea, which I am trying hard to sell, is that companies, food companies in particular should accept that they have a social responsibility and become community benefit companies.

It is pointless my saying that unless I can offer a technology that will benefit the community.

That is the Gbiota technology for growing plants.

I can’t change the world, I am just one old man so if Greta struggled to change the world on climate change then what hope do I have with food? My name is not Greta Foodberg.

But I do know how to grow food that will reduce the number of people with fat and wobbly bums and tums and with one foot missing.

That is what Gbiota is all about.

 

What is Gbiota?

Gbiota is the technology of breeding beneficial microbes in organic waste under controlled conditions such that they outbreed any harmful microbes using the principle of Ecobalance.

The result is a soil teaming with beneficial microbes and nutrients (Wickimix).

Plants are grown in the soil, the microbes enter the plants and then our gut which form part of the intelligent control system that regulates our bodies, particularly our appetite.

This could help reduce the modern epidemic of chronic disease, obesity, diabetes, heart attacks and dementia.

It is a simple and inexpensive process, the challenge is to get widespread adoption in a world dominated by a lust for profit, disinformation and clever and effective manipulative advertising. Tobacco, fossil fuels, food - profits ahead of community benefit.

Gbiota is a community benefit organisation.  We beleive the idea that company'y sole responsibilty is for shareholder profits is a great failure of modern society.

All companies have a duty to the community and be a community benefit organisations.

Support us please by keep on reading.

 

There are two parts to the Gbiota movement.

The easy bit

The first is the Gbiota technology. By serendipity, luck, hard work and maybe a bit of talent I was a pioneer of Computer Aided Engineering in computational fluid flow for which I was recognised as one of Australia’s leading innovators and a world leader in fluid flow.

Gbiota technology is about creating the conditions so the good bugs outbreed the bad bugs by creating what I call Goldilocks moisture. To be honest this is straightforward engineering to someone with my background.

The difficult bit

The second is to create a better, more human-orientated and stable society.

My long-term aim is to create a new industry of local growers that supply Gbiota boxes to their local community.

These would be community benefit organisations that accept that a company is not in business purely to make money for their shareholders but has a responsibility to their community.

This comes naturally with a local business where the business owners are in regular contact with their customers.

The opposite is true for a multi-national company where the directors are under pressure to maximise returns by whatever means possible.

This does not lead to a good society with gross inequality and the losers suffering. Eight millions people a year have a limb amputated from diabetes so mega corporations have super profits.

That is not good society.

Hopefully you will support this movement, the first step is to read Rethinking food, my dynamic E-book. I decided to make a nominal charge of $Au15 ($Us10) so I can pay the people who are working on this project a fair wage.

We are not a charity, we are a community benefit organisation.

 

I am advised by smart people who know about internet marketing never to start a web page with bad news.

This ridiculous idea that bad things go away if you pretend they don’t exist provoked me to write ‘My Teddy’ about hiding under the bedclothes

and ‘The Great Food War’ which is hopefully a bit of a wake up call to those how think life is wonderful.

There are many more controversial articles in my E-book ‘Rethinking Food’ which is a must read if you worry about sustainable and healthy food production.

Well, I am 84 years old, fit and healthy and am horrified by the number of wobbly bums and tums, and people hobbling about with a leg amputation whenever I go to the local shopping centre.

So next time you go to the shopping centre take off your virtual reality glasses, think about what you see and ask yourself why.

I don’t mean a little why like there is too much sugary fatty food on the shelves or too much disinformation on social media, keep digging until you get to the real answer.

If you are like me, lucky enough to have a technical background and old with the time to spend hours each day reading technical papers you will see that it is not a technical problem. If you don’t have the time then you can read the articles on the web.

You will see that we have the technology to stop this epidemic of chronic infectious diseases while having a sustainable food system.

If we have the technology to fix it then why has it not been fixed?

It is a battle between profits and public benefit and profits won, for now.

But if you and your friends and your friends friends work together this can be changed.

It won’t be easy and it will take more than the attention span of a moth.

I created this web to tell the story of food that will make us healthy. It is devoid of clever marketing gimmicks and we don’t sell magic pills that don’t work, we just tell the story about the world’s food system as it is and more importantly what you can do about it.

We are in the front line in the battle of the modern web, clever manipulative marketing versus facing the world as it really is.

The first step is to understand the issues, for example, why is it that people in the blue zones live to a ripe old age, fit and healthy to the end with only a basic health system while we in so-called high technology countries with a sophisticated health system get fat and sick and die well before the age of natural death?

I have written ‘Rethinking Food’ what I call a dynamic E-Book which is a collection of articles about food and health I have written over the last thirty years.

None of the popular magic slogans ‘like eat less exercise more’ and instead gets down to the underlying causes of the modern health epidemic and yes it will take a bit of time and thinking.

If there was a simple punch line it would be that the cause is the way we grow our food so it is lacking the beneficial microbes which form the intelligent control system in our gut biome and the lack of critical trace minerals.

Don’t blame the modern food industry for what is in our food, it is what is not in our food that matters.

You then have two options, you can learn to grow plants with the beneficial microbes in Gbiota boxes yourself - not that difficult and you can do tomorrow - instructions are on this web

or you can help us in creating a new industry where local growers supply Gbiota boxes to their local community as a viable business.

We are a social benefit organisation that thinks beyond making a profit.

 

 

 

 

 

Community Health

Colin Austin© 2024 Published under the Creative Commons system. This article may be reproduced without further permission, just acknowledgement of source www.gbiota.com

The essence

We are in the midst of an epidemic of chronic diseases, overweight, diabetes, heart attacks and dementia.

It is a problem for almost everyone, three out of four people will die prematurely from a chronic disease, it is the great health challenge of our time.

We know chronic diseases are caused by the wrong fat in the wrong place but what makes us store more fat?

Just take a look around your local shopping centre and see the number of wobbly bums and tums and people with a diabetic amputation.

But why are so many people getting fat?

Changing paradigms

The current paradigm is the calorie balance theory, we eat more more calories than we consume. We get fat because we are little piggies and overeat.

This is a popular theory with the powerful food industry because it means it is not their fault, it is your fault for being a little piggy.

They are very good at manipulative promotion so the calorie imbalance theory has become the accepted paradigm and that has to change.

Partial truth

The basic laws of physics, like the conservation of mass and energy, are valid. To get fat and sick we need to consume more than we burn. This is what enables us to get fat but is not the reason.

The calorie balance theory may be convenient, popular with big food and have some elements of truth but it is only part of the story.

So what is the real reason?

Our intelligent control system

Our bodies have a built-in intelligent control system which regulates our bodies, particularly our appetite and immune system.

We have known this for 175 years but still struggle to understand exactly how it works. Just because we don’t fully understand how it works does not mean it does not exist.

There is ample observational evidence showing that it exists and works. Without our intelligent control system, we would not survive, it is essential for life.

Our gut-brain, the microbes in our gut communicating with each other, creating intelligence so are an essential part of this control system.

For hundreds of thousands of years, we fed our gut-brain so there was no epidemic of obesity or chronic or non-infectious disease - we died mainly from infectious diseases.

But our food system changed and no longer contains gut-brain food so our gut-brain senses this deficit and sends out hormones to make us crave food and overeat.

Despite all efforts to apply the calorie balance, the epidemic gets worse day by day.

Social and technical challenges

The social challenge, however difficult it is to create a paradigm shift from the calorie balance paradigm to the intelligent control paradigm.

The technical challenge is to breed the beneficial microbes without breeding the harmful microbes. This must be simple and economical enough to be done at scale so the population as a whole can live a healthy life.

Health should not be a luxury for the wealthy.

Feed your gut-brain

We know how to feed our gut brain, it is straightforward and inexpensive, but must be done right - breed the beneficial microbes in a special growing medium controlling the conditions so the beneficial microbes preferentially outbreed any harmful microbes, grow plants and eat the plants shortly after harvesting.

Changing paradigms is always a bloody business but with the vested interests, this will be a particularly bloody battle.

Here we tell the story of this bloody battle.

 

 

Preface

I would rate climate change as the biggest existential threat to humanity and food and the epidemic of chronic diseases as the second.

However, there is one fundamental difference.

With climate change we know what needs to be done, we may not like the idea of stopping burning fossil fuels and there are very powerful companies using very clever but manipulative tactics, to protect their profits, but we at least know what we should be doing.

The technology we need to apply is not disputed - the problem is the social one of how to make the change happen.

This is not the case with chronic diseases. We know that before 1940 there were people who suffered from chronic diseases but it was not an epidemic.

Since the modern food system developed after the war, it has transformed into a global epidemic. Diabetes is the fastest growing disease with 8 million people a year suffering from a limb amputation.

It is a global phenomenon with every country struggling to learn how to deal with it, and failing miserably.

No country has solved the epidemic of chronic diseases.

It is not just rich countries, poor countries have suffered far more. In these countries, when fed using their traditional agriculture, there was no major issue with chronic diseases.

However many of these countries swapped from their own food production to the far more profitable system of growing for the rich countries while importing the supposed more convenient modern processed foods which has led to some of the worst cases of chronic illnesses.

This is powerful evidence that this epidemic of chronic diseases is linked to our modern food system.

The epidemic is man-made, it will not be solved by some magic pill or wonder plants. We certainly have to look at the technology but if we are going to be successful in combating the chronic disease epidemic we have to look at the society which allowed the epidemic to evolve.

A pretty hot topic.

Introduction

The widely held view, simplistic and wrong, is that this epidemic is caused by our modern foods, full of sugars, fats and flavourings (often addictive) which has led to the view that this can be resolved by the calorie balance, eat less exercise more and the problem will be resolved.

We have been trying that formula for half a century, it has failed miserably.

If I can quote the old adage - the difference between a wise man and a fool is that they both make mistakes but the fool continues with the same approach while the wise man tries to understand why he failed, and learns from the experience to develop a new approach.

Climate change is the sister problem to the chronic disease epidemic and they have a lot in common.

We can learn a lot about how to combat chronic diseases by comparing the history of climate change and chronic diseases.

Comparing climate change and the chronic disease epidemic

Studies in both areas started around 1850.

Early climate change

With Climate change the early pioneers were Fourier in 1824, but it was in 1856 that Eunice Foote demonstrated the warming effect of the sun is greater for air with water vapour than for dry air, and the effect is even greater with carbon dioxide.

Despite her pioneering work climate change is typically associated with Svante Arrhenius in 1896.

We had to wait until 1938 for steam engineer Guy Callendar to do the grunt work of calculating the expected rise in temperature from various levels of greenhouse gases. Working with pencil, paper and slide rule he came up with pretty much the same answer as our modern-day supercomputers.

Early intelligent control

But so we keep to the same era let me switch to the history of Intelligent control.

The work on what we now call the intelligent control system is similarly dated starting with the concept of what was then called ‘the regulation of the internal environment’ was described by French physiologist Claude Bernard in 1849, and the word homeostasis was coined by Walter Bradford Cannon in 1926.

Basically, we are talking about how the body naturally self-regulates - a topic critical to combating the chronic disease epidemic.

In both cases we are not talking about some magic innovation but with a history going back the best part of 200 years.

 

The Social Side of Modern-day Climate Change

You may wonder why in an article on the chronic disease epidemic I am talking about climate change.

The answer is simple, we will never resolve the chronic disease epidemic purely by technology, it is man-made and the result of social issues so we have to understand these.

Climate change is further down the road than battling the epidemic so we can learn a lot by studying the climate change battles.

The climate change area got really interesting with the work of Charles Keeling in 1958 with the production of what we now call the Keeling curves which showed a steady increase in greenhouse gas levels.

In the early 60’s he presented his work to Congress to warn the world of the dangers of climate change.

It would be wrong to say that the Government took no action as the National Science Foundation withdrew its funding. If that does not make you stop in your tracks with your mouth wide open I don’t know what will.

But why would they do that?

We know that the oil industry, particularly Exxon were fully aware of the threat that climate change presented to their profits.

Their approach, learned from the Tobacco industry was to promote the idea that climate change has occurred naturally throughout history with periods of intense cold and other periods when the world was much warmer than now.

There were periods when the poles were enjoying a period with a temperate climate with forests and animals just like in modern temperate zones so there is no problem.

That’s if you don’t consider the millions of climate change refugees fleeing their homeland as it becomes uninhabitable.

Presumably, that was the week when mega-fences were on special.

Manipulative promotion

This is the classic technique used in manipulative promotion.

It is no good denying something that is supported by undeniable evidence (like the Keeling curves) instead you provide partial information which is equally valid, like the fact that climate has changed over time but never provide the full information which would reveal your hereditary as a snake oil salesman.

This gains confidence, but only providing partial information gives the impression that the idea you want to deny is either incorrect or irrelevant.

It is very effective.

Watch out, small girl approaching with cardboard placard.

But all this very clever and no doubt expensive manipulation of the Government and the public thinking was thwarted by a little school girl - Greta Thunberg.

Now let us stick to the facts, Greta did not develop solar panels or wind turbines or any new technology, she just read the information that was widely available on climate change, translated it from techno-jargon to everyday English and sat outside the Swedish parliament with a grotty cardboard sign and after a bit managed to convince a few people that this was a real threat that the Government should be doing something about.

And what did the Governments do, just what they had done before - procrastinate and do nothing.

And then more nothing - until

So what happened next? An unprecedented increase in floods, drought, fires and storms that were completely out of the normal so no normal intelligent thinking person could ignore just leaving a few die-hard deniers.

In my life as an innovator, I have had to fight many battles and I used to divide people up into activists - people who would go out on a limb and actually do something, puddings - people who would agree with everything you said but never do anything and crusties - who would just deny anything on principle - the good news is they die off, eventually.

These climate disasters led to protests, with Greta, not so much as the organiser but the symbol that the climate change movement could centre around.

But climate change cannot be averted by demonstrations or even a few dedicated people putting solar panels and batteries on their houses.

It can only be averted by Government action. It is only Governments that can achieve the massive transformation of our society from one based on fossil fuels to one based on renewable resources.

But what those protests did was to show to the Governments that Climate change was not just the interest of a few dedicated climate activists (who could safely be ignored or locked up) but was a serious issue for much of the population.

So the Governments quickly worked out that unless they responded they would be voted out of office and the procrastination evaporated.

 

What has this to do with the epidemic of chronic disease?

No one disputes that chronic diseases start with the wrong fat in the wrong place.

The question is what is causing this increase in fat?

It is very convenient to say that it is because we eat too much and don’t exercise enough so the solution is to eat less and exercise more. The law of the calorie balance.

This is a very convenient partial truth for the food industry and any procrastinating Government. It takes the responsibility away from them and puts it onto the public who, with a wave of some witches wand, have suddenly turned into little piggies.

It is not my fault

Partial truths are the key tool of those wishing to manipulate the real truth for their benefit and are certainly a bonanza for the food industry - it is not our fault that you get fat and sick and maybe have a leg chopped off from diabetes it is all your fault because you eat too much and don’t exercise enough.

It sounds so reasonable and logical and it is not untrue, it is a partial truth which can be just as harmful as a miss-truth.

We have known for the best part of two hundred years that our bodies have an intelligent control system which regulates our bodies, particularly our appetite or what and how much food we feel we need to eat.

Control systems

Regrettably, we do not know it works, at least at the code level, but we have ample experimental evidence to give us a pretty clear picture of the way it works.

I am an engineer, and engineers make machines and every machine has some form of control system, even if it is just an on/off switch.

My first job was working for a company that made control systems for power stations, later in life I wrote software to manage irrigation systems, which I refer to as self-learning software.

This is not that different to our internal control system which decides how much food we need.

The plants are growing and they need different amounts of water at the various stages of growth, just like humans need different amounts of food as they grow and age.

The conditions are continuously changing, sometimes it is hot and dry and other days it rains, just as some days people go for long walks or are stuck in an office with maybe a lot of stress so each day we need different amounts of different types of food, sometimes energy food and other times comfort food.

In an intelligent irrigation system, we can monitor these conditions, and learn how to apply the right amount of water. We may not know the code in our bodily intelligent control system but we can observe and with an understanding of how intelligent control systems work have a pretty good idea of how our intelligent control system works.

What we see is that if our bodies sense a deficiency in our diet it will respond by sending our hormones to make us feel hungry so we may end up overeating.

If we are on a diet we may manually override these hunger desires, but that is difficult to do for any length of time.

The most common deficiency in modern food is lack of the beneficial microbes that power our gut, but we can also sense deficiencies in trace minerals.

The food industry would much prefer you to think that you are fat and sick because you are a little piggy rather than the real truth that modern food is commonly deficient in both beneficial microbes and trace minerals and that is the true cause of the chronic disease epidemic.

But it is not always the food industry’s fault, as anyone who has spent a hot sweaty day in the garden and craves something salty to eat. This is our intelligent control system doing its job of regulating our food supply to meet current conditions.

 

Only fools keep on repeating their mistakes

For the best part of fifty years, we have followed the calorie balance approach and every year the epidemic of chronic diseases has increased. Yet we say that it is because people are not trying hard enough and they need to eat even less and exercise even more.

It has the logic of the farmer who was trying to train his donkey to eat less and got it down to one bean a day when the donkey died.

Instead, we need to focus on ensuring our intelligent control system is working properly, which means feeding it gut-brain food and then training it so it learns what type and how much food we need.

Health and the New Capitalist System

We have come a long way since the days of Adams Smith and his perfect market philosophy.

We now live in a new era of mega-corporations with Neo-monopolistic powers that control not just products but also the flow of information. They operate on the principle of profit first, certainly profits before people.

Naturally, the general population look to their Governments to protect them from any potential abuse of power but this is becoming less effective.

Governments themselves are not immune to pressure from these mega organisations which have the power to influence Governments directly by a level of access to Government not available to the general voter but in this age of disinformation, they have the power to influence voter behaviour.

This unwillingness of Governments to exercise control over this market power has led to a widespread disenchantment with the political system and the rise of so-called populist Governments even in countries which have enjoyed a stable moderate Government such as the Scandinavian countries and dare I say Australia which despite its apparent conflicts has been a comparatively well run and stable country.

But despite this Australia is still among the leaders in the epidemic of chronic disease.

So what can we do about it?

Learning from Greta

We can learn from Greta.

The world’s leading scientist were warning their Governments of the dangers of climate change, and they just procrastinated and did nothing.

The fossil fuels companies had a very simple argument, climate change is natural, it has changed many times before from hot to cold. A simple statement of fact with the implication that there was no problem with climate change and we could go on burning fossil fuels (and making profits for the fossil fuel companies).

The Governments were happily under the influence of the fossil fuel companies.

Then along came Greta Thunberg and still nothing happened until the effects of climate change were undeniable (except to the crusties).

Then Greta gave a speech, to my mind one of great speeches of all times. It was not a particularly sophisticated speech, but one only an emotional young girl could give.

Not the sort of speech that Charles Keeling (or I for that matter) could give but what she said changed the world forever.

What she said was ‘You have stolen my future with your Blah, Blah, Blah’.

No sophistication really just one word Blah repeated three times.

No long words like procrastination just Blah, Blah Blah.

I very much doubt if Charles Keeling had ever heard of Greta before but together they changed the world.

Charles Keeling, and all his associates, with all their sophistication and respect as scientists failed to change the course of history unaided.

Greta was not a scientist, did not develop any new technologies or insights into existing technology and would have done nothing without the expertise of these dedicated scientists.

But she took the sophistication of these scientists and made it clear to the world that it was time to stop procrastinating with just three words Blah, Blah Blah.

From Climate Change to the chronic disease epidemic

Combating the chronic disease epidemic is analogous. I am not without standing in the world of technology. I was a pioneer of Computer-Aided Engineering, I solved complex coupled non-linear equations to solve difficult flow problems and was recognised by the Australia Institute of Engineers as one of Australia leading innovators and recognised as a wold expert in fluid flow.

I (and a few other respected scientists) have been saying for decades that the root cause of the epidemic of chronic disease stems from the failure of our internal intelligent control system because we are not feeding our gut brain.

I have spent years experimenting with ways of growing food to preferentially breed the beneficial microbes to create a technology which can be economically applied at scale.

But like the partial truth, which benefits the fossil fuel industry, that climate has always changed there is a similar partial truth, which benefits and is profitable for the food industry, that calorie imbalance is the cause of the chronic disease epidemic.

People are just little piggies and eat to much - we are not to blame.

But sad to say I am not Greta, I recognise that I talk about osmotic pressure, hydrophobic and hydrophilic soil and the peculiar inter molecular forces of water which makes life possible and that sort of talk can be incredibly boring.

But I do know that somewhere out there is Greta Foodberg. She may be a mum with two babies on the other side of the world and worried about their future and she will tell the world in her own language like it is.

I am not Greta Foodberg so can only guess what she might say it may be ‘You have stolen my health with your Fib, Fib, Fib’.

I just hope that when she says these words that people will respond and demand an action plan. So that is what I have prepared.

 

Action plan

As you may have guessed solving the chronic disease epidemic is going to take a bit of thought.

It is in two bits the easy bit and the hard bit.

The easy bit is developing the technology, I did that in comfortably under eighty-four years and I now I know the answer I could do it all again in an afternoon.

But as I have said the chronic disease epidemic is man-made and a result of the way society works, how do we change society so it works for the benefit of the community and not just a few greedy people - got you there ChatGPT - you haven’t a clue either.

But humans are sometimes smarter than even ChatGPT and the solution is doable - a nice word meaning you will end up old and drained, a bit like me, but you do win eventually.

Thomas Edison had a nice formula for innovation, work out what you want to do, read everything you can find to read on the topic, throw all the books away and start from scratch.

What do we want to do?

We want to feed our gut-brain.

We can do that by breeding beneficial microbes under preferential conditions (so the good bugs out-breed the bad bugs) in soil made from organic waste minerals and a few starter bugs, (Wickimix) grow plants in this soil so the good-bugs and nutrients go into the plants, then eat the plants before the good bugs die.

Technically straightforward.

The catch is that last phrase ‘before the good bugs die’. Breeding the good bugs is easy, they are a randy lot and are breeding within twenty minutes, putting teenagers at a drunken party to shame.

But they do die equally quickly and the best way of doing that is having the plants growing in boxes at home.

There are people, keen gardeners with a bit of time who are more than happy to do the entire process themselves but if we are going to feed the eight billion people on earth with gut-brain food we need more than a few gardening enthusiasts.

We need to create a new industry of local growers producing Gbiota boxes with plants already growing and ready to pick and eat.

Logistics

There are a few logistical issues here. In a big city, we need to have areas for what are essentially urban farms, they need not be big, just a normal house block size but that needs approval from the local council.

Then we need a collection system for the organic waste which is an integral part of the process and that means clean waste not just the kitchen bin with all last night’s beer bottles and plastic pizza boxes.

This is all good, recycling waste leads to a sustainable food system and local food ensures a resilient food system should nasty things happen.

Just to make a quick point, we are not aiming to replace the entire food system just supplement the existing food system with gut-brain food.

Making it happen

If all we had to do was to feed gut-brain food to the couple of hundred people in upper Woopwoop life would be easy. But there are eight billion people who need to be eating gut-brain food.

How do we do that? Create allies.

Combating the chronic disease epidemic is a major operation and no one organisation can be successful.

The key allies we need are

The Government

Governments are the only organisations with the power to make the change.

They also have the most to benefit. The health costs of chronic diseases are massive running into billions of dollars and worse they are clogging the health system.

Governments have many roles to play but the most important is educating the public that the underlying cause chronic disease epidemic is that our intelligent controls system is not working as it should. We should stop worrying about calorie balance and focus on feeding our gut-brain.

Health and Wellbeing

The majority of people now live in an urban environment.

If the design of our towns and cities were left to for-profit private enterprise we would see a continuation of the trend to high-rise apartments and smaller blocks with larger houses - this makes the most profit in the short term.

But a concrete jungle with no open spaces does not make for better living. We rely on our Governments to ensure that our cities are livable with green spaces where people can relax, kids can play, and generally have access to the infrastructure which makes for a better life.

This is the cost of living in a democracy, citizens need to be active in promoting what sort of life they want and not leave it to what is the most convenient.

Governments have many specialist departments with their areas of expertise and it may seem initially that the planning department should be the centre of attention. I would suggest that the Health and Wellbeing Department should be the focus of public attention.

Look at our modern food with food produced in mega-farms, possibly thousands of kilometres away from where it is consumed, shipped to factories for processing then further shipped to warehouses then supermarkets.

This structure is a prime cause of the modern chronic disease epidemic.

Now think about a better structure from the viewpoints of both health and quality of life.

We would set aside areas within the city for micro-urban farms so some food would be fresh.

We would collect organic waste and process this locally within the city boundaries in Gbiota beds where decomposition is underground so there are no smells.

But better still we would use these beds as recreational areas, with either plants or lawns.

Many people with environmental leaning criticise lawns as wasteful but this is not valid.

Lawns act as solar panels capturing the sun’s energy while at the same time capturing carbon from the atmosphere.

But they do much more, they also are giant evaporative coolers helping to reduce urban temperatures, often using grey water.

But they can also be used to produce Wickimix, the soil that is needed to grow gut-brain food.

Having a multi-use area for recreation is a good use of valuable space. Somewhere for the kids to play, people to have a picnic or just generally enjoy being part of nature as well as being part of the process of growing gut-brain food.

These are normally managed by the Parks department who may not see they have a critical role in the production of healthy food, recycling food waste to create a more resilient food system, controlling city temperatures, and capturing greenhouses gasses.

Multi-functional operation is not generally a strength of government departments who tend to be specialists but it may well be that the Departments of Health and Wellbeing may provide that coordinating service.

But as we have seen from the history of Climate change this needs social pressure from the community.

Research centres

Research centres, particularly the Universities are important as governments will turn to their specialist expertise for advice but also there are multiple facets to this project so we need access to a range of expertises.

Dietitians and doctors

Most doctors are not trained in diet and refer patients to a professional dietitian, but they need to be aware of the technology to make the referals.

Dietitians are key but many have been indoctrinated with calorie doctrine so they will need not just information but re-education to adopt different ideas.

Experience has taught us that paradigm shift are most difficult with people expert in the old paradigm.

Growers

Growers will become the core of the project, producing Wickimix (the special soi), processing waste organics and manufacture of Gbiota boxes which will be recycled regularly.

Growers are local so naturally are community benefit organisations.

The Consumers

Our modern society has adopted the view that food is something you throw into the shopping trolley and if you get sick just take a pill.

This is a paradigm that needs to be changed with the new paradigm that health starts in the soil.

Educating the public about the basic cause of the modern chronic disease epidemic is the critical part of the project and is something that can really only be done by the Governments, by direct promotion but also ensuring it is built into our education system.